Gestalt Therapy Effectiveness: A Systematic Review of Empirical Evidence

Rosalba Raffagnino

doi:10.4236/jss.2019.76005

Abstract

Gestalt therapy (GT) is a humanistic clinical approach. The research concerning the efficacy of this model represents a controversial and quite poorly investigated topic within the general field of psychotherapy effectiveness. An up-to-date review of the studies concerning GT efficacy is currently lacking. Therefore, we conducted a systematic review of all available studies in the past twelve years aiming to give an overview of the most important findings of empirical researches published in international peer review journals in English and Italian languages. A total of 11 studies were included in this review. GT intervention was shown to especially improve conduct in the group therapy setting—not only for clinical disorders, but also related to other social issues. Findings allow suggesting certain reflections concerning future directions in GT research.

Highlights

The gap between psychotherapeutic research and the clinical praxis is broad, and this is true for certain clinical approaches that—due to their theoretical principles and methodology—distance themselves from the empirical-positivistic methods of scientific research
This applies to Gestalt Therapy (GT), a humanistic and holistic approach based on phenomenology, which has suffered from a lack of scientific recognition over the years and from its focus mainly on practice and published papers that expressed the theoretical clinical point of view and the experience of the authors
We found a comparison between Gestalt therapy (GT) and other clinical models

Summary

Introduction

The gap between psychotherapeutic research and the clinical praxis is broad, and this is true for certain clinical approaches that—due to their theoretical principles and methodology—distance themselves from the empirical-positivistic methods of scientific research. This applies to Gestalt Therapy (GT), a humanistic and holistic approach based on phenomenology, which has suffered from a lack of scientific recognition over the years and from its focus mainly on practice and published papers that expressed the theoretical clinical point of view and the experience of the authors. Certain researches assessed the effectiveness of GT, recognizing its utility, and as affirmed by Elliott, Greenberg and Lietaer [3] “this body of research is continuing to grow rapidly” (pg. 4)

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Conclusion